12 June 2015
Gfinity plc
("Gfinity" or "the Company")
The 2015 Gfinity Championships tops 30 million views
Appointment of Non-Executive Director
Gfinity (AIM: GFIN), a leading eSports business, is pleased to announce that having reached the halfway point of its 2015 eSports championship series, it has generated more than 30 million online views.
Gfinity is also pleased to announce the appointment of Jon Varney as a Non-Executive Director of the Company with immediate effect.
Online views
The online views were achieved in three months up to the midpoint of the season, which runs from March to September. This performance has exceeded management expectations set at the time of Gfinity's admission to AIM in December 2014.
As a result of the strong growth, the Company is on track to exceed its target of 50 million views for the entire 2015 season.
Known as the 2015 Gfinity Championships, this year's fixtures comprise 25 weekly tournaments held in front of hundreds of fans at the Gfinity Arena in Fulham, London. These matches are also streamed live on internet TV channels including Twitch, Gfinity.net and MLG.tv. The events over the first half of the year have been broadcast in 10 languages and have been viewed across more than 25 countries.
Games featured in the tournaments included some of the world's most popular electronic games such as Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare; Counter Strike: Global Offensive; FIFA 15 and Starcraft. Final day of the CoD and CS:GO events were played out to a sold-out arena.
The current season has also seen a significant increase in the number of professional teams and top players competing in Gfinity tournaments for up to $50,000 in total prize money per event. Top teams hosted by the Company in the first half of the season included OpTic, Denial, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Fnatic and Team EnVyUs.
In April 2015, Gfinity announced its first major sponsorship deal, signed with News Corp UK & Ireland, publisher of Britain's The Sun newspaper.
Non-Executive Director appointment
Jonathan ("Jon") Varney is a Founder Partner of Pitch International Commercial LLP ("Pitch") and has been involved with the Company since Pitch were appointed to sell commercial rights on the Company's behalf in December 2014. Pitch owns a 5% stake in Gfinity.
As part of Pitch, Jon is responsible for building commercial partnerships between brands and rights holders. Pitch's portfolio of rights includes International Football and Cricket Federations and Broadcast Sponsorship of all Pitch programming. Jon was instrumental in securing the News UK sponsorship deal for Gfinity and the Company's venue partnership with Vue Cinemas.
Prior to Pitch, Jon Varney was a commercial director of Premiership Rugby, the umbrella organisation responsible for the development of elite professional club rugby in England. Previous roles prior to 2003 all revolved around the sports media sector including roles at Octagon UK, Movie and Media Sports, Coca-Cola Football and the RFU.
Neville Upton, Co-founder and Chief Executive of Gfinity, said: "We have delivered excellent levels of viewership in the first half of our first season as an AIM company. It means we are now on track to beat the viewership target we set ourselves for the 2015 season. The progress made thus far reflects both the rapid growth in popularity of eSports and our ability to deliver compelling eSports events and content sought-after by a young, global audience, which is otherwise difficult to reach by advertisers and consumer brands.
"We are also delighted to welcome Jon Varney to the Gfinity Board. Jon brings with him exceptional experience and insight of the commercial rights and broadcast markets from conventional sports and has already proved himself to be a great asset to the Company."
Details of Jonathan Peter Leslie Varney's (Age 45) current and previous directorships in the past five years are set out below:
|
|
Previous directorships |
Pitch International Commercial LLP |
Rugby Facilities Foundation Limited |
|
Premier Rugby Partnership Limited |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jon Varney currently holds no shares in the Company.
There are no other matters which are required to be announced pursuant to paragraph (g) of Schedule 2 to the AIM Rules.
Enquiries
Gfinity plc |
|
Jonathan Hall, Finance Director Neville Upton, Chief Executive Officer |
+44 330 223 0860 |
|
|
Arden Partners plc - Nominated Adviser and Broker |
|
Chris Hardie, Ciaran Walsh |
+44 20 7614 5900 |
|
|
Luther Pendragon - PR adviser to Gfinity |
|
Neil Thapar, Alexis Gore, Oliver Hibberd |
+44 20 7618 9100 |
|
|
Notes to editors:
About Gfinity
Gfinity is a leading UK-based eSports company serving, in co-operation with games publishers, a rapidly-growing community of on-line gamers worldwide. Founded in September 2012, the Company has established a popular on-line brand, gfinity.net, where gamers can compete, socialise and enjoy a wide range of content relating to electronic games on a proprietary technology platform. This platform enables Gfinity to run a regular roster of on-line competitions, leagues and ladders with the opportunity for gamers to enter and potentially win substantial prize money and/or pit their skills against professional and widely-followed ''star'' players.
Gfinity has quickly become a widely-recognised "destination" for gamers in the UK and internationally, typically aged 18 - 34 years old. The growing user base and the demographic of Gfinity's audience, together with the sheer numbers who view Gfinity's events online, provide brand owners and advertisers with an attractive environment in which to promote their products and services, as well as offering Gfinity the opportunity to generate significant revenues over the long term. Gfinity website: www.gfinityplc.com
eSports
eSports is a rapidly growing global market valued at $621 million with an audience of 134 million, according to SuperData's eSports market report (May 2015). With the majority of worldwide revenues coming from advertisers and corporate sponsors, corporate sponsorship is estimated to total $111 million in 2015 in North America alone. 13% of all live-stream viewers watch eSports, a large proportion use Twitch, the eSport streaming website, who in 2014 announced that they have reached 100 million unique users per month, more than double the 45 million achieved in 2013.
